Does realism explain the Arab Spring? Neorealist alliance formation theories and the Syrian civil war
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Mohammed Nuruzzaman |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211021566 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2021, Vol. 76(2) 257–279
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00207020211021566
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Does realism explain the
Arab Spring? Neorealist
alliance formation theories
and the Syrian civil war
Mohammed Nuruzzaman
School of Humanities & Social Sciences, North South University,
Bangladesh
Abstract
DominantInternational Relationstheories—realism/neorealism,liberalism/neoliberalism,
and constructivism—have so far developed no rigorous theoretical attempts to in-
terpret the Arab Spring, though some marginal efforts have been made to critique the
failure of realism to interpret this historical development. This article presents a
neorealist interpretation of the Arab Spring focusing on the Syrian civil war, where
conflicts between the pro- and anti-status quo forces have unfolded in alignments and
counter-alignments centering around rival domestic and external groups. To explain
the involvements of rival alliances in the post-2011 Syrian conflict, namely, the United
States–Saudi Arabia–Israel alliance and the Russia–Iran–Syria alliance, this analysis
employs neorealist theories of alliance formation—the balance of power and balance of
threat theories—as articulated by Kenneth Waltz and Stephen Walt, respectively. The
dynamics of these formations in Syria lend more support to Walt’s theory that states
balance against threats rather than against power. The complex nature and dynamics of
the Syrian war, however, calls for refinements of Walt’s balance of threat theory.
Accordingly, the article also explores various refinements of Walt’stheorytobetter
explain futurecomplex civil wars involvinghighly polarized domestic and externalparties.
Keywords
Arab Spring, Syrian civil war, balance of power theory, balance of threat theory, rival
alliances in the Syrian war
Corresponding author:
Mohammed Nuruzzaman, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, North South University,
Bashundhara, Dhaka 1229, Bangladesh.
Email: jamilm1968@gmail.com
The Arab Spring is a phenomenal political development in recent Middle Eastern
history. It has, however, received inadequate attention from International Relations (IR)
scholars, particularly from mainstream IR theoretical schools. Students of IR, as a
result, encounter few rigorous theoretical attempts to interpret this historical devel-
opment. A special issue of the journal PS: Political Science & Politics did publish
several short articles to explore connections between the Arab Spring and IR theories.
The articles, as a whole, engage “meta-theoretical questions of disciplinary dialogue
and the purposes of theory”
1
; however, they fail to deploy dominant IR theories to
critically examine the Arab Spring developments. Looking at the country-level pro-
democracy movements in Egypt, Hoover attempts to explicate external reactions to
Egyptian uprisings through realist lenses. He contends that, once anti-Hosni Mubarak
protest movements kicked off, Western leaders invoked the realist fear that a break-
down of the status quo would compromise Western strategic interests in the Middle
East. There was thus, Hoover argues, a “failure of realism”to support change over
preservation of the existing order.
2
In contrast, some liberal scholars have interpreted
the Arab Spring as a step toward the expansion of democratic peace,
3
without pre-
senting convincing arguments about how the democratic peace theory was advanced by
the Arab Spring. Drawing on Waltz’s structural realism, Coetzee counters this liberal
optimism for democratic peace and suggests that future international politics will be
more complex than in the past.
4
Coetzee thus critiques democratic peace theory, but he
presents no exclusive treatment of the Arab Spring through the lens of any IR theory.
From outside the mainstream IR theories, Mohamed offers a Marxist interpret ation of
the Arab uprisings alaAntonio Gramsci and Robert W. Cox.
5
Mohamed’s contribution
adds to critical IR theories, though other critical theorists did not follow up. Sadiki
broadens the discussion from regional to global terrain by underscoring the need for
interpreting people-driven movements through major IR theoretical lenses.
6
He devotes
little time and effort, however, to comprehensively studying the topic and promoting a
clear understanding of how major IR theories might explain Arab Spring developments.
This article makes modest attempts to study the Arab Spring from neorealist alliance
formation theoretical perspectives, using the Syrian civil war as a case study. Realist
theories claim to interpret the ways in which the political world works; hence, they
1. Marc Lynchand Curtis R. Ryan, “The Arab uprisings and InternationalRelations theory,”PS: Politics and
Political Science 50, no. 3 (2017): 644.
2. Joe Hoover, “Egypt and the failure of realism,”Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, no. 4 (2011):
127–137.
3. Seth G. Jones, “The mirage of the Arab Spring,”Foreign Affairs 92, no. 2 (2013): 55–63.
4. Eben Coetzee, “Democracy, the Arab Spring and the future (great powers) of international politics: A
structural realist perspective,”Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 40, no. 2 (2013): 299–
318.
5. Rasha Mohamed, “Springtime for Marxism? The possible applications of Marxist theory to the events of
the Arab Spring,”Social and Political Review XXII (2012): 129–140.
6. Larbi Sadiki, “The Arab Spring: The ‘people’in International Relations,”in Louise Fawcett, ed., International
Relations of the Middle East, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 335–338.
258 International Journal 76(2)
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